It was a slow day around Murphy Dome AC&W site. It was a lazy Sunday afternoon. Actually, my story involves the site`s function as an alternate command post for the Alaskan NORAD region. In that role, Murphy was responsible for controlling the airspace over the northern part of Alaska when delegated by the Region HQ at Elmendorf AFB to do so. Basically, it involved making sure we knew what planes were flying where and who they were. The Officer`s lounge was quite and with no TV or alternate forms of entertainment in my room, I had come down to see who else was bored. It was not the dead of winter, but it was still too cold to be comfortable on a walk outside. I hoped for someone to play ping pong or pool with in the lounge. Alas, there was only the site Deputy Commander there and he seldom played any games. But, we did start a conversation about family and friends in much warmer places. About that time the lounge phone rang for him. Seems the Ops folks had a track that was skirting the coast just inside our identification zones. It had been playing mouse to our cat for a while before they notified him. I followed him up to the Ops Room-through the under-road tunnel that connected the living area to the business area of the site.

I just drifted to the back of the room under the projectors that displayed the air picture on screens at the front of the room. There, I just watched with more than a casual interest. The Ops Officer was already there and quickly briefed the Deputy Commander on the aircraft track in question. I had spent some time in the Ops Room before so I pretty well understood what was going on. It didn`t take a rocket scientist to figure out that the long red streak on the screen was the one they were concerned about. It had already gone up the northern part of the Alaskan West coast and was starting to turn right along the northern most coast of Alaska.

That caused a lot of concern since this was in the mid 70`s and the North Slope oil fields were being developed. Everyone in the Ops Room knew how much of a National Treasure that oil was. After all, we had all waited in the long gas lines just a couple of years ago during the early 70`s energy crisis. In fact, the portion of the pipeline in central Alaska was at that very moment under construction no more than 30 miles east of the radar site. We had all been over to see it. It would not be a pretty thing to have some nut drop a bomb on the new oil pipe line. Even if it wasn`t a nut, I think the Deputy Commander could see his career flash before his eyes with the headline in the paper that might read something like, "Air Force Helpless as Russian Plane Flies Over North Oil Slope".

The fact was, we were pretty helpless. Yet, he was very calm and made many sound decisions on manpower allocations and assigning responsibilities to radar and fighter units in Alaska. We had fighters on alert, but they would never get to it from Galena in central Alaska before that red line could reach the North Slope, and if the F-4`s could go that far they`d crash out of fuel before they could get back to base. The decision was made to go on and scramble the 2 alert F-4`s in case the track headed back straight for us which was about the only way we`d ever intercept it. It didn`t head back. It just kept going east putting more distance between it and the F-4`s which were now on orbit. We all could sense that this was a Cold War cat and mouse game, but one that could get real serious with a wrong move by either party. The F-4`s were fully armed for a hostile intercept. It was a test to see what the unknown could do and get away with and what we could do about it. We were pretty sure they were listening to our radios. The game had been going on for over 2 hours by now. Frustration was descending on the Ops Room like the thick ice fog that formed around the car exhaust in Fairbanks. Everyone knew that the F-4`s couldn`t stay in orbit forever. They`d be out of fuel before long and have to RTB (Return to Base). Any additional F-4`s launched in this race would face the same fuel problems. So that was a useless alternative.

After watching this red track for some time, it slowly started to turn going back to the west the way it came. The data which by this time was coming to us from some of the northern most DEW line sites, showed the red line retracing it`s path back toward the west and Russia. The Ops Officer muttered under his breath as he realized that the F-4`s had been on orbit long enough that they couldn`t make an intercept even if the unknown did return on the same track on the outskirts of our ID zone. But he headed the F-4`s in that direction just to make a fake at him anyway.

Then as sometimes happens, fate played it`s hand in this larger than life poker game. Murphy Dome is near Fairbanks and so is Eielson AFB. Eielson is a staging base for KC-135 tankers. It just happened that there was a tanker with extra fuel on board coming into Eielson. When this was realized, there were many hurried phone calls and the Deputy Commander was explaining the situation to the people at Elemendorf and the tanker unit Commander at Eielson. He even spent some time talking on the secure phone line in the upstairs battle staff room. After this flurry of activity, there was a wait which seemed to me to be a long time and then I felt a sense of relief as the KC-135 track on our screen diverted to the left on a straight line for our now re-orbiting F-4`s. And then, there was more relief as the tracks merged and we had confirmation that refueling had started. The 135 topped them off with fuel and they went north as fast as they could go without going full after burners in order to save some of that priceless fuel so recently obtained. They were sent on an intercept course.

By now that red line had made the bend around the northwest corner of Alaska and was heading south more toward us. Responsibility for the track of the unknown had been handed from site to site as Air Force controllers at the outlining coastal radar sites were just as alert as we were. Maybe they were more alert, as one of them would actually be directing the interceptors by radio and radar to visual identification of the unknown. The unknown that thought it had made a trip to within striking distance of a US national resource and was on it`s way, home free.

Again we watched more tracks merge, but this time one of them was red. We know it was more than just red on our screen because the pilots reported a red star on the tail of the unknown- it was a Russian Bear Bomber. I bet it scared the fool out of them. You should have heard the cheer in the Ops Room when the pilots reported a visual intercept with the bomber. You would have thought that we had won the Cold War right then. But, most importantly the Russians now knew that we could make an intercept out there, and we could defend the Northern most parts of Alaska.

For the rest of my tour in Alaska, my Sunday afternoons did not seem so boring and meaningless after this day of excitement. My tour now had a definite purpose.